Neal Huntington: ‘We Are Not Rebuilding,” Has Spoken With Josh Harrison About Trade Demands

CBS Pittsburgh | Jan 18

The day after trading the face of the franchise in Andrew McCutchen, Pirates General Manager Neal Huntington called into The Starkey and Mueller Show to talk about the decision and the direction the franchise is headed.

Right out of the gates, Huntington talked with us about the tough decisions they had to make to take this organization in the right direction “as counter-intuitive as that seems.”

“We recognize that we traded two very popular, two very talented players, two players that were a huge part of our success” and “unfortunately we weren’t good enough the last two years,” which led to the moves as both players contracts were coming to an end within the next two years.

Huntington sited internal projection models that showed they were right on the verge of the playoff race this upcoming season with Cole and McCutchen on the roster and was asked if that’s the case, why not build around them to get over that hump?

“Because we weren’t good enough a year ago and I’ll take all the blame for the moves that I made after 2015 and 2016 not working and putting up back in the playoffs.”

That being said, Neal outlined how organizations can get themselves in trouble by not realizing when it’s time to give up the false hope in front of them.

“Teams get themselves in a lot of trouble if they continue to hold on with some hope that may or may not be real and fail to make the moves that they need to make to restock and replenish and to refresh and that’s what we feel we did in these trades.”

Neal admitted that they understand the anger over those moves from the fans.